Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The much talked about Indian tablet costing as low as $35 is taking shape and soon will be seen in the market. The tablet is now officially called Sakshat and will be launched by January 10th of next year. The low cost laptop will be manufactured buy HCL technologies and the Indian government has already allocated $6.5 million or Rs. 300 million for the project. HCL has earlier worked on a similar ‘low cost project’ when it partnered with Microsoft to produce world’s cheapest Windows laptops, the Classmate PC in 2008.

Earlier in July the Indian Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal showed off the prototype touch screen computer which the government hopes to roll out to students with the end cost to further get down to $20 or even $10 after subsidy. The device will come with a color display and can performer functions like web browsing, email, word; processing and can even display YouTube videos. The device will have a solar charging option and will run the open source Linux OS.

The low cost laptop named Sakshat is also expected to include other features and specification like a 2GB of RAM, USB ports, integrated Wi-Fi connectivity. Sakshat will support web conferencing, video, media player, Internet Browser, PDF reader, Open Office and unzip utilities. The Sakshat will be a 9-inch tablet with camera and surprisingly low power requirement. It will need just two watts of power.

The tablet will be introduced to higher education institutions next year. Sakshat will be tested by Indian Institute of Technology in Rajasthan ‘in intensive laboratory and fields tests across the country.’ The manufacturer of the tablet Sakshat, HCL has contracted with the Indian government to manufacture 100,000 units in the first phase of production. The government plans to purchase these 100,000 units after testing and distribute to university students in second half of the year.